Surreal 64 xxx CE B5.5 skinning Doc

Before you start creating your own skins you can save some time by knowing what's involved and how to properly develop a skin. 

The best program you can use for this is Photoshop.

The best way is to create a psd or use the one shipped to manage your skin components. Having each individual item as a layer will help you organize your materials. Move everything around how you like it and pay attention to the coordinates your pieces are located. Check the Info Tab next to Navigator and Histogram in the upper right corner of Photoshop. 

Knowing the size and position of your skinning items is key to creating a new and unique skin.

Once your skin is drafted, export all the files as .pngs with the exception of ingamebg which should be in jpg.

Not everything is completely customizable as some items are "clipped" together. Take for example Surreal Menu, its text position is set, but the Menu Background is 10 pixels up and 10 pixels to the left. The Hilight bar is dependent on the position of the menu item and is offset 10 pixels to the left, aligning it on the Menu Background.

The next step involves getting the font to fit snuggly in your new skin. Test the skin out and see how many more or less characters you need to fill each menu without overlapping. Change RomListCharacterLimit and MenuCharacterLimit to fix this. 

Font Color can be changed as a hexadecimal entry. 0xAARRGGBB is a good way to look at it. Your Alpha or transparency will come first 00 being completely transparent and FF being completely opaque. RR, GG, and BB are Red, Green, and Blue. Their color intensity is figured the same, FF being the highest and 00 being the lowest. 

The last part would be finding some good music to complement your skin. Convert it to .wma and call it main.wma 
